Peter England ‘Scores’ with #TweetAGoal: First Ever Twitter Football Match

The Football World Cup set the tone for the Football fever to kick in and a host nation like Brazil, was taking the fever a few notches up! Twitter was populated with #VanGaal, #NedVsGer, #BraVsCol, #ArgVsNed, #Neymar, #TheflyingDutchman and at a time with big names flourishing Twitter Trends and Tweet streams, ‘Brand-oriented’ Social Media had a plan of it’s own.

Peter England being no exception in joining the festivities, invented a version of Football of their own, with a “Twitter Twist”. A micro-site with a Peter England stadium, an integrated tweet stream and a bunch of Twitter-hungry footballers was all it took to get going. #TweetaGoal was all ready for kick-off.

Objective

Execution

When it’s digital you’re talking about, it all comes down to that big idea followed by the execution. And 10 out of 10 to Peter England for that.

The idea of the first ever Football match via Twitter was played up. A microsite that lay all its emphasis on Twitter was created. All the possible rules of the lovely game were incorporated but with a “Twitter Twist” added to it.

Here’s a quick guide:

The ‘goal’ of the game was to keep possession of the ball – Possession was equivalent to tweeting the most. So the only way of being in possession of the ball was by being one up on anyone else who was also tweeting at that time. The more you tweeted the higher the possession of the ball.

In the middle of the game, goals were scored and the tweeter in possession of the ball at the time of the goal, stood a chance to win some Peter England goodies.

Pretty neat and simple ha?

With an average of a tweet every 2 seconds, Tweeters were frantically tweeting to maintain possession of the ball. Becausein case a goal was scored, possession was the key!

Fouls in the form of ‘Red’ and ‘Yellow’ cards were given to tweeters who would spam the Tweet stream of #TweetAGoal.

Tweeters NOT tweeting about football were considered as an ‘Offside’.

This way rules of Football were implemented and violators of the rules of the game were penalised ‘Football’ style but on Twitter!

Conclusion

To sum up, the idea revolving around football, its concepts and its incorporation via Twitter and a microsite was quite an innovation. Here’s a video that’ll take you straight to the game as it happened.

Aditya Bhatkal is a Social Media & SEO consultant and strategist. Heading the business development team at Enterprise Social Media he has backed and cornerstoned the online presence of clients in the F&B industry, FMCG sector, the apparel industry, Interior decor, Information technology sector and educational sector. An Instagram 'hashtags' geek and an ardent writer he spends half his day on the internet researching anything and everything it has under its roof. You can see what he thinks like on his twitter handle @adityabhatkal